Title/Description: Some more reasons not to
go to war
Author/Source: Compiled from Miscellaneous SourcesDate: September 2001

VENGEANCE
IS NOT JUSTICE (from www.madre.org)

President Bush has made it clear that the US
will retaliate with military force. But more violence will not break the
cycle of bloodshed, nor will it lessen the destruction and loss of life
in New York and Washington.
The US historical
record is full of misguided retaliatory attacks, such as the 1986 bombing
of Libya,
which only succeeded in killing dozens of civilians and the 1997 bombing
of a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant that manufactured most of that impoverished
country's antibiotics and vaccines. The only aim served by a military response
is revenge. And what's needed now is not vengeance, but justice. Those of
us concerned with justice -- for the victims of these attacks and for people
worldwide -- must work to ensure that any US
response respects international human rights standards and civil liberties
at home.

ASKING OURSELVES WHY (from www.madre.org)

Why would people want to wage this attack against the United
States? President Bush informed us that
we are under attack "because we love freedom and prosperity."
In all likelihood, we are under attack because US policies have denied freedom
and prosperity (and even subsistence) to millions of people around the world.

Consider the historical record: Since World War II, the US
has bombed 26 different countries. Throughout the 1970's and 1980's, the
US killed
more than two million people in Southeast Asia and
supported death squads across Central America, including
a policy of genocide in Guatemala.
Ten years of US bombing and sanctions against Iraq
have left more than a million people dead, including 500,000 children. Successive
US administrations
have commandeered the oil resources of the Middle East,
leaving most people impoverished and suffering under authoritarian regimes.
The US provides
the funds and political backing for Israel's
34-year illegal occupation of Palestinian land and gives diplomatic cover
to Israeli human rights violations.

The United States
is the biggest arms dealer in the world, supplying weapons that are aimed
mainly at civilian populations. US economic policies have caused a sharp
rise in poverty and inequality around the world, while lining the pockets
of US corporations. And since George W. Bush came to power, US
arrogance and militarism have increased dramatically. Nothing justifies
arbitrary attacks against civilians, whether in New
York and Washington
or in Baghdad and Belgrade.
Defending this principle entails an honest appraisal of the underlying reasons
for such attacks.

SHOULD THE U.S.
RETALIATE?(from www.freedomroad.org)

In
a just world, the accomplices of the people who committed this act would
be brought to justice. (In point of fact, the people who actually did it
are dead.) But we don't live in a just world. In the world we live in, bringing
those responsible to justice will almost certainly be a case of the cure
is worse than the disease.

Most importantly, retaliation continues and reinforces the cycle of violence.
Far from guaranteeing the safety of U.S.
citizens and residents, it puts us more at risk. The lessons of the Israeli
government's attempts to crush the Palestinian struggle in the occupied
territories over the last thirty-five years prove this. Neither collective
punishment nor precisely targeted assassinations of leaders have stopped
the struggle. New fighters come forward and desperation gives rise to anti-civilian
tactics.

Another
reason is the law of unintended consequences. The best recent example of
this is Osama bin Laden himself. As is well known, at least in the movement,
bin Laden is a direct product of the U.S.
program in the 80s.There are less
obvious examples. Suppose the U.S.
forces Pakistan
to allow U.S.
troops to be based there for military operations. Mass public support in
Pakistan
for Taliban-style Islamic fundamentalism could lead to the overthrow of
the government. Alternatively, the Pakistani government could respond to
the contradiction by trying to deflect mass anger into nationalism through
a sharp escalation of its long struggle with India.
The result? A showdown between two extremely hostile governments, both headed
by religious fundamentalists, both with nuclear arsenals.

CAN A NON-MILITIARY
OPTION BE PURSUED?(from
www.commondreams.org)

Perhaps the lesson to be learned from Oklahoma
City is that our country did not take the bait. The
U.S. did
not declare war on McVeigh and his network of extremist fellow-travelers.
The Bill of Rights and civil liberties were not trampled on the path to
increased security. Instead, McVeigh and his accomplices were dealt with
as a democracy deals with mass murderers. They were apprehended, prosecuted
and punished after being given trials, lawyers, the right to confront witnesses
and challenge evidence. The armed fanatics who sympathized with McVeigh
were not all hunted down and destroyed, but theyve certainly been
quieted. Many of us abhor the death penalty that was given to McVeigh, but
the rule of law prevailed.

Its
appalling how little mainstream media have discussed relying on the rule
of law -- international law -- to pursue the foreign terrorists. Few reports
have pointed out that there is one body under international law that can
authorize military action: the United Nations Security Council. If the U.S.
has strong evidence against Osama bin Laden and associates, and Afghanistan
continues to refuse extradition to the U.S.,
the U.S.
could present its case to the Security Council, which could authorize the
equivalent of an international arrest warrant.

AFGHANISTAN
DAY  A FLASHBACK

In 1982, invading Afghanistan
was a violation of every standard of decency and international law.
The Afghans bled like other humans. And they had the right
to be free of foreign interference. Apparently, the rules have
changed.

March 10, 1982: A Proclamation By the
President of the United States of America

In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan
without provocation and with overwhelming force. Since that time, the Soviet
Union has sought through every available means, to assert its
control over Afghanistan.

The Afghan people have defied the Soviet Union and
have resisted with a vigor that has few parallels in modern history. The
Afghan people have paid a terrible price in their fight for freedom. Their
villages and homes have been destroyed; they have been murdered by bullets,
bombs and chemical weapons. One-fifth of the Afghan people have been driven
into exile. Yet their fight goes on. The international community, with the
United States
joining governments around the world, has condemned the invasion of Afghanistan
as a violation of every standard of decency and international law and has
called for a withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan.
Every country and every people has a stake in the Afghan resistance, for
the freedom fighters of Afghanistan
are defending principles of independence and freedom that form the basis
of global security and stability.

It is therefore altogether fitting that the European Parliament, the Congress
of the United States and parliaments elsewhere in the world have designated
March 21, 1982, as Afghanistan Day, to commemorate the valor of the Afghan
people and to condemn the continuing Soviet invasion of their country. Afghanistan
Day will serve to recall not only these events, but also the principles
involved when a people struggles for the freedom to determine its own future,
the right to be free of foreign interference and the right to practice religion
according to the dictates of conscience.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United
States of America, do hereby designate
March 21, 1982, as Afghanistan
Day.In Witness Whereof, I have
hereunto set my hand this tenth day of March, in the year of our Lord nineteen
hundred and eighty-two, and of the Independence
of the United States of America
the two hundred and sixth.

Ronald Reagan

War does not end the cycle of vengeance
as is historically seen in previous such wars.

War does not target terrorists through
air attacks; Civilians are the overwhelming casualties

1.It is also important
that the United States not retaliate militarily in a blind, dramatic matter
as has been done in the past. In 1997, in retaliation of the terrorist attacks
of two U.S. embassies in Africa, the U.S. bombed a pharmaceutical plant
in Sudan which supplied more than half the antibiotics and vaccines for
that impoverished country. [FOIL edit. It may be added that the US
voted against setting up UN and other commissions to inquire into the civilian
casualties.]

2.The Clinton administration
falsely claimed it was a chemical weapons plant controlled by an exiled
Saudi terrorist. In 1986, the U.S. bombed two Libyan cities, killing scores
of civilians. Though the U.S. claimed it would curb Libyan-backed terrorism,
Libyan intelligence operatives ended up blowing up a U.S. airliner in retaliation.

3.Military responses
usually result only in a spiral of violent retaliation. Similarly, simply
bombing other countries after the fact will not protect lives. Indeed, it
will likely result in what Pentagon planners euphemistically call "collateral
damage," i.e., the deaths of civilians just as innocent as those murdered
in New York City. And survivors bent on revenge.

(All quotes above from Stephen
Zunes, a senior policy analyst and Middle East editor of the Foreign
Policy in Focus Project. He is an associate professor of Politics and chair
of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco.
This is an excerpt from an FPIF opinion piece published by the Baltimore
Sun September 12, 2001. The entire article is available at http://www.fpif.org/index.html)

4.Where was the justified
rage of commentators, analysts, and talking heads when the United States
attacked civilians on a massive scale during the Gulf War, even referring
to Basra, a city of 800,000, as a "military target." Where was
it when they deliberately destroyed the water treatment systems of the country,
and then spent ten years carefully rationing the chlorine needed to treat
the water and the medicines that could be used to fight an explosion of
water-borne disease, while over 1 million Iraqi civilians died?

(Quote from Rahul Mahajan,
an antiwar activist who serves on the National Board of Peace Action
and the Coordinating Committee of the National Network to End the War Against
Iraq. (Identification only). He can be reached at rahul@tao.ca Entire article
at http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0912-07.htm)

Reassuring words from governments going
to war have never been truthful

1.Back in early August
1945, President Truman had this to say: "The world will note that the
first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because
we wished in this first attack to avoid, in so far as possible, the killing
of civilians." Actually, the U.S. government went out of its way to
select Japanese cities of sufficient size to showcase the extent of the
A-bomb's deadly power. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hundreds of thousands
of civilians died -- immediately or eventually -- as a result of the atomic
bombings.

2.While top U.S.
officials spoke of fervent desires to protect civilians from harm in Southeast
Asia, the Pentagon inflicted massive carnage on the populations of Vietnam,
Laos and Cambodia. Both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon tirelessly proclaimed
their eagerness for "peace with honor." Most of those who died
were civilians.

3.When U.S. troops invaded
Panama in December 1989, the USA's major media and policymakers in Washington
ignored the hundreds of civilians who died in the assault.

4.Scarcely more than a
year later, during the Gulf War, most of the people killed by Uncle Sam
were civilians and frantically retreating soldiers. Pentagon officials quietly
estimated that 200,000 Iraqis had died in six weeks. During the past decade,
damage to Iraq's civilian infrastructure and ongoing sanctions have cost
the lives of at least several hundred thousand children.

5.In the spring of
1999, we were told, the U.S.-led bombing of Yugoslavia aimed only at military
targets. The explanations were often Orwellian -- not just from the Clinton
administration and NATO, but also from news media. Consider the opening
words of the lead front-page article in the New York Times one Sunday in
April 1999: "NATO began its second month of bombing against Yugoslavia
today with new strikes against military targets that disrupted civilian
electrical and water supplies..." The concept was remarkable: The bombing
disrupted "civilian" electricity and water, yet the targets were
"military" -- a very convenient distinction for PR purposes, but
irrelevant to the civilians who perished due to destruction of basic infrastructure.

In human terms,
the emerging U.S. military scenarios are ghastly .No amount of vehement
denials can change the reality that huge numbers of civilians are now in
the Pentagon's cross hairs.